The combination of words and illustrations are what gives some pony books their special magic. Silver Snaffles, when reprinted by Knight as a paperback in the 1970s, lost all its illustrations and, for many readers, much of its charm. When the news spread about Fidra’s reprint of the book, virtually all the requests I had for it asked me to confirm the reprint had the original illustrations. Those people saw the book and its illustrations as a whole, and as something which had suffered when the illustrations were cut.
For many of us, Caney’s Jill will always be our Jill, and Geoffrey Whittam’s Tamzin and Rissa I find it almost impossible to imagine as looking any different to his portrayal of them.
The pony book has been lucky in having some splendid illustrators (as well, it must be said, as those who appear never to have seen a horse). In the UK, titles illustrated by Lionel Edwards are collected regardless of how good the books themselves are. Many sporting illustrators have a number of pony book commissions to their credit: Cecil Aldin, Peter Biegel, Gilbert Holiday and Michael Lyne among them.
A note on the bibliographies: I suspect that most of these are not complete. I start off by trawling the British Library catalogues, then check other Copyright websites, and finally search bookselling sites. Despite this, making a complete record of what an illustrator did is not an exact science. An author is always mentioned: an illustrator nearly always is, and if they only contributed a frontispiece, or the cover illustration, it appears to be potluck. So, if you know of other books I have missed out, please let me know. If you can forward a photograph as well, so much the better!
